Tom felt his face go hot. “No, I-”

“I got a couple of white boys I use for situations like these. And I think even Lincoln Park can handle one black man wandering free,” he said, inclining his head toward Andre. “Now, like I said, my people will be there. But Jack’s got some savvy on him. So they going to have to be laying low. They won’t come out till you give the signal.”

“What’s that?”

Andre rattled off a string of digits. Tom stared at him blankly.

“Program that shit into your phone,” Andre said. “Once you got the dude distracted, you press Send.”

“What if he sees me do it?”

“Make sure he don’t.”

“Also,” Malachi said, “you need a bag.”

“A bag? What for?” Anna’s look of confusion was so perfect Tom fought an urge to kiss her right there. She hadn’t given even a hint that she knew exactly why they’d need a bag.

“I have an idea what Jack is after,” Malachi said. “You get yourself a decent size bag. Carry it like it’s heavy.”

“What if Jack wants to look inside?”

Malachi shrugged. Tom’s stomachache grew worse.

“How are you going to grab him in the middle of a mall?” Anna asked.

“Now, that’s a fine question. But I don’t see you needing the answer.”

“Here’s one we do need the answer to.” Tom looked the man in the eye. “After we do this, we’re square, right? We’re done with you?”

“You do this,” the man said, “you prove what I need proved.” He leaned back in his chair, shot his cuffs. “Long as everything goes the way you say, yeah, we square.”

“And what about Jack? What are you going to do to him?”

Malachi shook his wrist to straighten the loose Rolex, then glanced at it. “I’m going to give him a history lesson. Genghis Khan style.” He stood. “Now. You two best be on your way. You got a few details to attend before ten.”

“Wait a second,” Tom said. “Where are you going?”

The drug dealer laughed. “Son, I won’t be inside five miles of that mall. And I’ll have witnesses to back me. This thing, it’s on you two. It goes wrong, you screwed it up.” He raised his eyebrows. “We clear?”

“Clear that you’re leaving us dangling.” Tom was unable to stop himself from glaring, to keep the tone out of his voice.

Malachi just smiled again. “Pay to play, gangster. You got to pay to play.”

“WELL, THAT WENT GREAT.” Anna leaned back in the passenger seat, balanced the arch of her feet against the glove box. She had the window cracked to let cool spring air in. “Just great.”

Tom shook his head. Pressed his lips together hard.

“What if Jack wants to look in the bag first thing? Not like there’s a reason for us to chat. All he wants is the money. He’s probably planning to just walk up, look in the bag, say something threatening, and then walk off.”

“Assuming he doesn’t plan to kill us anyway.”

“Assuming that.”

Tom sighed. “I don’t know. We can stall him, I think. He’ll feel safe. What scares me is that at the same time, we have to signal Andre. One thing we know about Jack, he’s smart. He’ll be watching for any sign something is wrong.”

“He doesn’t know about Malachi, does he?”

“No. He won’t be expecting this. If he’s expecting anything, it will probably be police. He’ll have his eyes tuned for cops.”

“That will work for us,” she said. “He won’t be looking for gangsters.”

“Gangsters. Jesus.” Tom shook his head. “What the hell are we doing?”

She looked over at him. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and his posture rigid. She could almost hear the whir and clank of his thoughts colliding. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Why did you ask what they were going to do to Jack?”

He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess just to make it real.”

“Is it going to bother you?”

He shook his head. “I wanted to see if it would. Whether planning something like this was going too far. But when Malachi said what he said, I didn’t feel a thing. The truth is, I don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to Jack. After what he’s done…” He shrugged. “Fuck him.”

“So we’re going ahead.”

“I don’t see any choice. You?”

She shook her head. They rode in silence, Anna looking at a familiar world gone strange. A guy on a bike, a woman walking a couple of dogs, a kid at the bus stop wearing a T-shirt that read “You looked better on MySpace.” It felt like one of those ant farms, a pane of glass that let you stare into something that was supposed to be hidden. Only, the world was normal, and it was her eyes that had changed. “You sure about stowing the money?”

“Yes.” His voice was firm. “We’ve been careless. What if the car got stolen or towed? What if Jack happened on it? What we’re about to walk into, as exposed as we’re going to be, that money may be our lifeline. We need to protect it.”

“Things could go right too, you know.” She turned to look at him. “Don’t forget that. If we pull this off, it’s all over. Malachi will be done with us, and Jack will be gone. No one will know we have the money. We’ll be able to go back to our life. Only better.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

They’d rented a space at the storage facility off Belmont years ago. In D.C. they’d kept separate apartments, so when they moved in together, they’d had twice as much furniture as space. Tom’s had been garage-sale crap, but he’d been sentimental about it – or hedging his bets, something Anna had wondered at the time – and so they’d rented a ten-by-ten and piled stuff to the ceiling. Eventuallythey’d hauled most of it to the garbage and surrendered the lease, but when, leaving the restaurant, Tom had suggested that they needed to move the money, the place had jumped to Anna’s mind.

He went inside to rent a unit while she walked to a Sun-Times machine. Dropped coins into the slot, then opened the front and pulled out the whole stack of papers, including the one in the display. By the time she’d returned to the car, he was waiting, the duffel bag in one hand, cell phone in the other. He shook his head, closed it. “Detective Halden again.”

“You check the message?”

“No. I’m nervous enough. Let’s get on with it.”

He’d gotten the smallest available unit, a five-foot cube on the third floor. The hallway was fluorescent and concrete, marked by roll doors. Their footsteps echoed. Tom bent to fit the key into the lock and haul the door clattering upward.

The space was clean and blank. The two of them stepped inside, then dragged the door closed behind. Tom unzipped the bag and upended it. Bundles of ragged hundreds tumbled out, and Anna had the same surreal feeling as when they first found the money, that same breathless skipped heartbeat. All that freedom piled up on a concrete floor. In the confined space, she could smell it, a dank, unpleasant odor of humanity.

Tom shook the last straggling bundles from the bag, then set it on the floor and held it open. Anna piled the stack of newspapers inside. They bulged against the side much like the money had. Tom hefted it, testing the weight. “It’s close enough.”

Anna tore the band off one bundle, then dumped the money on top of the newspaper and smeared it around. At a glance – a quick glance – it might look like they had undone all the money and were carrying it loose. Thin, but better than nothing.

She looked up to find Tom staring at her, one side of his lips curled up in a smile. She could see a bead of sweat on his upper lip, and the weathered lines beginning to form around his eyes, and then he leaned in and kissed her, one hand going behind her head, and she went with it, her tongue sliding into his mouth, his beard stubble rough against her lips, the two of them bending across a pile of money to breathlessly neck like high school kids. When they finally parted, she put a hand against his cheek. “What was that for?”

“Luck,” he said. “And gratitude.”